China’s children, whose responsibility?

Tens of millions of children are left behind in China’s countryside by their parents who migrate to the cities for work. Who is responsible for how these youngsters develop and for helping them to deal with their problems? Parents? Factories which employ the parents? Government?

This is one of the issues to be discussed by Britta Ostrom, executive director of the Beijing-based non-profit organisation Center for Child Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility (CCR CSR).

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:Britta Ostrom has extensive experience working in children’s rights and has been the executive director of CCR CSR since it began its work in August 2009. She was regional director for Europe of Save the Children, Sweden (SCS) from 2004 to 2009. She was SCS regional director for Southeast/East Asia & the Pacific, based in Vietnam, for five years, and was also in charge of an EU-funded child protection project with the Vietnamese government in Hanoi. Ms Ostrom, who is from Sweden, used to be a teacher.

The Center for Child Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility, the first such centre in the world, investigates and advises on what can be done by all firms, big and small, foreign and Chinese, to ensure the leaders, workers and consumers of tomorrow are treated with respect today, while they are still children. The organisation recently launched a parenting booklet, “Distant but still Close”, and has begun training hundreds of factory workers on how to communicate more effectively with their offspring who might be thousands of miles away. The Center was involved in consultations for the new Children’s Rights and Business Principles (CRBP); the global launch was in London last month. CCR CSR is working on how to implement the Principles in China.